


Alive

by Arke



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Established Relationship, Frottage, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mass Effect 3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-05-28
Packaged: 2018-07-10 19:55:15
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7004239
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Arke/pseuds/Arke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the failure on Thessia, Shepard withdraws into his cabin and into himself.  Perhaps taking his cue from the commander himself, Kaidan attempts to remind Shepard of his humanity, to save the man whose shoulders bear the weight of all those lost lives.  Only he can show Shepard that there is more to being alive than knowing the feel of an unsteady pulse of a finger on the trigger.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Alive

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, I’m new here, and new to this fandom. It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything… like, a decade’s worth of long. I can’t say this is my first fanfic, but it certainly feels like it now. Mass Effect has been the only series to inspire my interest in fanfiction again in ten years. Any feedback is welcomed and greatly appreciated!
> 
> This fic is set during Mass Effect 3, right after the _Priority: Thessia_ mission. I’m sure this scenario has had plenty of fics written about it, but I wanted to take a shot at it, too. Because reasons. I took a few liberties with in-game scenes, though there are only a few present here, regardless. This fic also assumes an established Kaidan-mShepard relationship. :)

It could have been easy to turn away from the console in the comm room.  The chime wavering about the room in maddeningly steady intervals, the light on the console a flickering orange, mimicking with a disconcerting accuracy the fires backlit by the sunset on Thessia – leave it behind, he briefly thought, leave it to burn out into silent darkness.  But he was not heartless enough to do so.

Shepard had no idea how long he had leaned against the doorway.  He had stopped attempting to keep a vague notion of time long before he returned to the _Normandy_ from the ground mission on Thessia.  Seconds blurred into minutes, and somehow time stood still, the endless ring in the comm room the sole sensory stimulus for however long.  When he finally approached the console to answer the asari councilor’s call, he waited for the inevitable inquiry with his head hung low.

He told Tevos everything with as few words as possible: that the mission was a failure, that they did not know how to finish the Crucible, that her home world was burning as they spoke.  The moment the holographic form dropped her head into one hand, shielding her eyes from him, he knew his words would mean nothing.  No words could possibly penetrate the horror and dismay and grief at knowing that the failed mission – _his_ failed mission – had cost so many lives.

But still he closed his eyes and said:

“I’m—”

The vague light beyond his eyelids disappeared.  The councilor had disconnected, leaving only an unsteady silence in her wake.

“…sorry.”

His voice drifted aimlessly through the empty room, the single word reverberating off the walls and finally dying only when it reached his own ears, and again there was silence.  He remained still, leaning forward, eyes closed, hands braced against the console, until he could no longer stand it.

The debrief that followed went as well as it could have: orders to get the _Normandy_ out of the Parnitha System as quickly as possible, an unexpected new path extrapolated from Traynor’s signal tracking, a new destination that was in itself no guarantee of success.  Shepard dismissed the team with curt orders: “I want the data.  I want the Catalyst.”  And both were true.  His trigger finger itched for revenge more strongly than it had in a long time.  But tracking Kai Leng and ridding the galaxy of him and Cerberus forever would not restore the lives lost on Thessia.

Shepard waited for everyone else to filter out of the war room, standing with his gaze locked forward on the map in the center, staring past the visible motes of dust in the recycled air, studying every flickering light.  But as silence again returned to the room, a troubling thought reared against the back of his mind: if he memorized every location, ran his numbers by the book, and calculated with certainty every step he should ever take, would the mission end with the same spectacular failure?  His gaze fell, tired eyes closing partway.

From his post in the doorway, Kaidan watched Shepard linger in the silence for far longer than he should have.  And upon witnessing Shepard’s grip on the edge of the console falter with uncertainty – finally breaking from its stoic control – Kaidan turned on his heel and headed for the Starboard Observation.  It was where he always spent his time; it was where Shepard could always find him if needed.

Shepard finally made his decision within the silence of the war room.  He dreaded reaching the CIC, where Traynor stopped him for a moment to express her condolences about the mission, quickly shadowed by the clarification that the mission could not have concluded any other way.  Then two or three other crewmembers made the same effort.  Every time someone said “you did everything you could,” however good-natured the intention, it made him want to retch.  He had no words to respond, so he never did.

He had intended to take the elevator straight to his cabin, but stopped himself when he overheard two crewmen approaching the door, each expressing brief concerns about how Tali had been standing in front of the memorial wall for a solid ten minutes.  Beyond that, however, they gave their commander an obligatory salute and then avoided eye contact with him.

When the door opened to Deck 3, his hesitation was enough to convince the two crewmen to take their leave, and they disappeared around the corner into the mess hall.  But remaining before him was Tali, who stood facing the memorial wall as she had been for a long while, gaze fixed forward on the nameplates that cascaded down each side of it.  She had not heard Shepard’s footfalls as he approached, her mind and ear having been focused elsewhere.  From several feet away he could hear Garrus’ voice emanating from her omni-tool, and he quickly determined that their exchange was an awkward muddle of concerns about Liara – unproductive, as well, as neither one could come to a decision on what they should say to her, if anything at all.

He set himself aside again and told Tali that he would speak with Liara.

She had holed herself up in the old XO office, which she had claimed some time ago when the _Normandy_ had completed retrofits and she had returned as a full member of Shepard’s team.  Now, though, she was alone, sitting atop the bed in the tiny living area at the back of the office.  Datapads littered the sheets before her, endless words and figures and numbers scrolling in cycles that never reached any conclusion.  Her eyes downcast, she watched through her tears as the lines scrolled by.

“I told those people that we’d save them,” she said, her voice so soft that it was more of a piteous whimper.  Her world was burning, her people were being slaughtered in droves, and she sat there, wounded and beaten together with them.  When she finally lifted her gaze to meet his, the pain in her eyes stabbed at him like a knife.

“How many died because I failed?”

Her whispered words were a tortured soul’s last stand.  It was like staring into a mirror, with the exception that Liara had the luxury of letting herself cry.

He used his diplomatic voice, stable and confident and final.

“No one died because of you,” he told her.

Spoken as truth, but tasting like a lie, the unsettled feeling in his gut returned in full force, as though he knew he could never convince himself regarding the same issue: that he had done everything he could.

Shepard often perused the ship and spoke to the crew.  It was how he ran his command as both a leader and as a human being.  He knew their hopes and dreams, their fears – their lives – and took them all upon himself as if they were his own.  He had never been one to issue orders from atop some high horse; he had always been on the ground, sullying his boots in the mud alongside them as a colleague and friend.

Losing any one of them was akin to losing a part of himself, and he had lost plenty over the years: Jenkins, Ash, Pressly, Mordin, Thane, Legion – and every loss chipped away at that statuesque façade, threatening to reveal the simple man beneath.  With Thessia lost and the image of Liara’s tearstained face etched into the back of his mind, the remorse over his failed plan eroded him from within. 

He had never felt as guilty and foolish and pitifully human as he did at that moment.

Shepard’s subsequent hour-long absence was the first indication that he needed to be alone.  There was an unspoken agreement from the crew on that.  No one knew how to save the man who lived to save others.

Yet, perhaps taking Shepard’s example, Kaidan took it upon himself to try.  He knew Shepard too well to assume that the commander did not need a shoulder sometimes, even if he would not seek it out himself.  He hoped that this was one of those times.

Kaidan took a step off the lift at Deck 1 and hesitated at the door to Shepard’s cabin, lingering doubt surfacing from some unknown reaches at the back of his mind.  But he knew how to maintain composure.  It was a skill he had honed long ago, long before military life, long before the _Normandy_ , long before Shepard would have ever needed it from him.  He knocked on the metal frame to one side of the door.

“…’s open.”

Breathing a sigh of relief, Kaidan let himself in.

The lights had been dimmed, delegating the fish tank at one wall to the task of bathing even the furthest nooks in a faint blue hue.  As Kaidan approached the short staircase beyond the commander’s desk, he hesitated upon glimpsing the intervallic flashes of the console monitor: an untold number of messages demanded Shepard’s attention, his words, his effort – none of which he would leave unanswered, despite all the frustration, the resentment, the strain.  But right now, his silence was deafening.

A few datapads littered the floor, and several more had been strewn across the tabletop in an imperfect line.  Shepard was seated in the middle of the couch, leaning forward with his elbows digging into his knees, hands clasped tightly together as though each one was restraining the other from reaching for the nearest datapad and throwing it across the room.

“Shepard.”

He never looked up.  His response fell mechanically from his lips.

“Hey.”  Short.  Brusque.  Tired.

Kaidan stood still at the last stair.

“If you’d rather be alone, say the word, and I’ll go,” he said.

When Shepard did not reply, Kaidan decided it was tacit agreement.  Or, at least, he thought, perhaps he should settle for the absence of outright dismissal.  He maneuvered around the metal handrail to the empty space on the couch at Shepard’s side.  Shepard kept his eyes locked forward, never showing any indication that he had even acknowledged the shifting weight beside him, his mind walled off to all outside influences, preferring to keep him trapped exactly where he was.

Kaidan wrapped his arms around Shepard’s waist and rested his cheek on the commander’s shoulder, closing his eyes to the back of the couch that faced him.  His only reward was a slight twitch against the palms of his hands.  But he drew closer, holding on like that for as long as Shepard would allow.

“You did everything you could,” he finally said.

Shepard’s head lowered the slightest bit, his gaze fixed somewhere between the floor and the tabletop.

“It wasn’t enough—”

Another unsteady tremble against his arms made Kaidan raise his head, only to witness Shepard’s stoic – but slowly faltering – profile as he continued to stare forward into the abyss.  Kaidan let his other cheek fall to Shepard’s shoulder, keeping his eyes open in the hopes of finding anything like what Shepard saw at that moment.  

There were no empty bottles of booze cluttering the tabletop as Kaidan had halfheartedly expected.  Guilt welled in the pit of his stomach as he pondered why: perhaps it was Shepard refusing to dull the memory, as though it would be an insult to all the souls lost on Thessia if he could not remember his own pain at this moment.

Shepard knew the ruthless calculus of war, but, perhaps to his detriment, he was not a machine; he was a soldier, an imposing presence expected to make as many careful decisions to save certain lives as it was to take deliberate shots at others, though none of these were easy calculations.  And seeing the consequences unfold, hearing the desperate calls, smelling smoke, and tasting blood was when war evolved beyond arithmetic into a very real, all-consuming flame, every billow of smoke emanating from which carried countless souls on the wind.

He had no delusions about being able to save them all, but still every death weighed upon his shoulders until his armor cracked and split around them.  There was only so much fight in a man, only so much death he could handle until life itself became a delusion.  That was the reality of the war he faced.

He had been so close to ending that war once and for all, but now the unknown variables stacked up against one another – and he had no idea of what would come next.

All of the planning and calculations and decisions had resulted in failure.

Shepard’s hands lowered, finally releasing one another from their shared vise grip.  He leaned back to straighten his posture, and Kaidan again lifted his head.

“You okay?”

When Shepard finally looked at him, Kaidan felt a pang of realization shoot up his spine: the insecure frown upon Shepard’s lips, the crease of his brow, the dark circles underlining tired eyes – he was slowly breaking apart.  But as Kaidan’s hands slipped away, fingers inadvertently sliding against the padding of his uniform at his midriff, Shepard brought his own hand to the crook of Kaidan’s neck, his thumb brushing against the edge of Kaidan’s collarbone until it was pressed into the base of the biotic’s throat with more force than he had intended. 

Kaidan remained as still as he could manage, his hands frozen at his thighs, his eyes fixed forward on Shepard’s face, seeking some cue from the unfathomable depths of that expression: blue eyes searching and piercing, lips subdued by silence, skin taut but unnaturally warm.  The combination was unrecognizable, as though Shepard’s mind and heart were struggling for dominance in the midst of opposition the likes of which neither had previously experienced.  Shepard had always had a certainty to his words and actions, his every decision a consequence of agreement – sometimes begrudging, at that – between duty and soul.

The uncertainty that now met Kaidan’s gaze severed every thread of continuity between the two.

Another hand gripped Kaidan’s wrist, and his gaze flicked down toward it.  His initial reflex to pull it back was interrupted by a fierce kiss pressed to his lips.  It was rough, all teeth and dry lips against him, and within moments he felt his torso being pulled forward.  One hand moved to clutch the exposed fabric at his waist, and another twisted around the back of his neck to tilt his head to the side, granting Shepard the angle and depth he desired.

But that was the last of Shepard’s calculated moves.  His hands wandered aimlessly, and his lips moved off course, sliding against any exposed skin they could reach.  Kaidan’s momentary pause was just long enough for Shepard to begin tugging at the major’s uniform before he could protest, not that he would have in the middle of the sudden action, that initial moment of ignorant bliss where heart dominated mind.  And Kaidan panted against him, hands splaying across Shepard’s back, breath hitching on a single failed attempt to swallow the dryness in his throat.

When Shepard began tearing at the clasps of Kaidan’s uniform until the fasteners broke free from their grommets and the material pulled uncomfortably against his skin, Kaidan regained enough awareness to recognize the peculiarity of the situation, however stifled it was beneath the overpowering sensation caused by the dexterous lips at his neck.

“Shep—”

Shepard captured his lips and swallowed the word.  Under no circumstances did he want to hear his name: it dragged him back to reality, conjuring up labels of “hero” and “savior” and all those other impossible idolizations that no man could possibly reach.  Thessia was a painful reminder of that.

In fact, were he to have his way, he would hear no words at all for what remained of his waking hours.

He took to removing all the garments and padding and material that he could manage with such desperate hands: boots first, cast aside toward the single chair at one end of the table; padding and skivvy shirt second, drawn up over his head and left to fall to the couch in a jumbled pile.  Kaidan struggled with his own uniform as Shepard guided him to his feet, the commander’s hands again wandering while still prodding him toward the bed, and Kaidan was pliant under the touch, his lingering doubt falling prey to the urgency of his desire at this moment.  He had barely managed to draw his shirt off when Shepard again crashed his lips against him.

Shepard kissed him with fervency like animalistic hunger, deprived of all rational thought, as though satiating it was his sole reason for existence.  No intricate thought process, no split-second strategic analysis, no numbers or time.  Here, at this same moment, there was only a body running on instinct alone.

No politician, no hero – no pretense – just the basest form of self.

When the backs of his knees hit the edge of the mattress, he collapsed in a heap, dragging Kaidan along with a sharp grip on his bicep, and Kaidan complied, shrugging off the boots he had partially wedged off in his haste and kicking them aside.  Shepard’s mouth at his neck, the tense rakes of Shepard’s fingernails up his bare back, the undeniable hardness pressed against his thigh – they all overwhelmed Kaidan’s senses until he was writhing along with him, muscles kneading against each other, lips tracing haphazard patterns over warm skin.

Kaidan moved further up on the bed to straddle Shepard’s waist, shins cratering the sheets on either side of his lover.  Closing his mouth over Shepard’s again, his hands slid to the buckles and fasteners at Shepard’s waist and made short work of them, quickly finding the leverage he needed to tug the trousers completely off and then cast them aside to the floor.  He palmed Shepard’s half-hard length in one hand, relishing in the short gasp that erupted from him, which forced their lips to part for a single intense moment under the promise of grander sights and sounds and tastes.

He raised himself up, baring his naked chest to Shepard and trailing his fingertips down the commander’s sides.  When he drew back and began to lower his head, a sudden grip at the juncture between neck and shoulder made him stop midway, every breath still close enough to Shepard’s waist to elicit twitches from the perspiring skin there.

“Don’t.”  A short command, but lacking the conviction to be decisive.

Kaidan lifted his gaze, silently pondering to himself if it truly meant that Shepard wanted to stop, as though Shepard’s rational mind had returned in full force just as suddenly as it had been lost.  But when Shepard raised himself up on his elbows and again seized his mouth, Kaidan trembled beneath the callous strokes of the lips at his own, the feverish pace hungering for reciprocation.  The tongue that slid along the roof of his mouth and against the back of his teeth sent shudders down Kaidan’s spine.

With one hand clutching Kaidan’s shoulder for balance, nails digging into skin and fingertips quivering with anticipation, Shepard tugged at the fastenings of Kaidan’s trousers with his free hand, his every move more agitated than diligent.  Kaidan leaned forward, balancing his weight on one hand splayed out over the bed sheet and pulling at the straps and buckles with the other, and Shepard shivered when his back again touched the sheet and sank into the sweaty dampness there.  He arched his back and craned his neck to meet Kaidan’s lips, only to then pull away and run his tongue across his neck and bite his shoulder.

Kaidan’s legs now rested against the inside of Shepard’s thighs, all heat and sweat shared between overstimulated skin and twitching muscles, lifting Shepard’s legs apart and exposing every intimate detail.  Never removing his mouth from its exploratory touches against Kaidan’s neck, Shepard reached down to slide his palm along the underside of Kaidan’s length, drawing his thumb up and over the slit, smirking as the moan of sheer need fell haphazardly from Kaidan’s lips into his ear.  But when Shepard pulled Kaidan by the shoulder and positioned the tip against his entrance, Kaidan nearly bit his tongue.

Shepard’s arms fell to the sheets, his stern eyes still fixed on Kaidan’s, his legs parted and raised, his muscles tense with impatience.

“Do it.”  It was issued as an order, masquerading under the guise of his last vestiges of control, but belied by the shameless catch in his throat at the end of it.

Kaidan retreated slightly.  He worried about a dozen things all at once, none of which would give an inch to any of the others.  Preparation, pain, psyche – any number of concerns that Shepard appeared to be ignoring.  Kaidan wished, if only for a moment, that he could sense anything from the man beyond the throbbing sense of urgency that wafted about the air between them.  He mentally debated himself, struggling to determine whether he should stay, delving into the unknown with hopes of finding Shepard holed up somewhere deep within, or turn tail and run, denying Shepard what he wanted and instead leaving him alone with what he needed.

And all Kaidan could do was stammer through his thought process: “But, I-I… you – well, you—”

Shepard gripped Kaidan’s upper arm with forceful haste, determined to leave bruises where his fingers set into the skin there.

“Damn it, just do it.”

Kaidan swallowed hard.  He pressed forward against the tight ring of muscle.

Shepard grimaced, his eyes clenching shut in refusal to display any notion of weakness.  Kaidan winced along with him, the combination of resistance and the pull of reluctant muscles tensing around him nearly too much to bear.  Shepard’s thighs were shaking against Kaidan’s waist, alternating between parting slightly wider and closing together – or as close as they could get to one another with Kaidan between them – as his body sought some sort of balance in the friction and angle.  Shepard’s hands fisted the sheets; he had long only secured that grounding sense of control in what he could firmly grasp in his hands, but now his hands searched for purchase while his body writhed, utterly lost in the blind throes of desire.

Kaidan stopped once he had been sheathed to the hilt, and Shepard let out a guttural groan, his eyes opening to find an unfamiliar dew clinging to his eyelashes and obscuring his vision.

They were so close, so intimately connected, and yet all Kaidan could see was the aggrieved flicker in Shepard’s eyes, which had dulled from their usual blue shade.  Shepard’s mouth had fallen open into an unflattering gape as he panted, but soon enough he was again gritting his teeth and lifting his chest the slightest bit for leverage.

“Move.”  Another order, dry and detached, foreign to the lips from which it erupted.

Kaidan shifted only once, slowly and carefully, to gauge Shepard’s reaction, but the commander clenched his teeth behind his ever-moving lips and endured it.  The pressure never relented, and the heat increased in intensity, like a fire burning in the pit of his stomach that threatened to overwhelm all else.  Kaidan could see it all: the way Shepard’s biceps flexed as his hands clung desperately to the sheets; the way his head rolled to one side, sweat from his brow trailing down one temple; the way his chest heaved erratically with each sharp inhale and terse exhale.

When Shepard lifted his haunches up on his heels and rolled his hips, his body seeking more than his mind could process, Kaidan bit his lip, pressed steadying hands into the sheets on either side of Shepard’s shoulders, and quickened his pace.  Shepard tilted his head back, a deep, hoarse grunt erupting from his throat, his Adam’s apple bobbing in time with the staccato of short moans that followed.  Reflexive muscles tensed over Kaidan’s erection, and he shuddered forward with a single hitched breath, fingers curling into the sheets, loosened strands of hair falling over his damp forehead and sticking in chaotic lines.

Writhing under every hurried thrust, Shepard lay there with one forearm drawn to his temple, fingers burrowing into the upturned palm and veins bulging at the wrist.  His other hand grasped the nape of Kaidan’s neck, where a finger twitched in rhythmic motions as though reflexively reaching for the trigger.  Even now, he was fighting, whether he willed it or not.

“Shit…”  A curse that slipped between clenched and bared teeth, it was a single protest from a body that was unraveling at the seams, having for the longest time been threatening to come undone with every new scar forced upon it.  Every scar was the result of failure: a slow reflex, a wrong move, a missed opportunity.  He brought his forearm down and bit into it with enough vehemence to draw blood, reclaiming the pain as though it were another battle, allowing himself to ride the adrenaline high until it would inevitably collapse under the weight.

Kaidan drew Shepard’s forearm to side, his hand gripping the wrist against the sheet, denying Shepard the opportunity to embed more scars in his flesh.  Kaidan’s head dropped with the guilt of having caused this pain.  In any other circumstance, he would have trusted Shepard to know his own limitations, and that dedication was now staring back from the abyss: from Shepard’s eyes clenched shut, from the hard grit of his jaw, from the pure agony on his face.  And Kaidan wondered if he had done the right thing.

Kaidan was always overthinking everything, from the greatest feats of mankind’s journey into space to the most inconsequential choices of everyday life.  But it was all part of him: steady, dependable, and honest, a rare constant in a war plagued by unknowns.  But even Kaidan had never done any research here: he wanted his feelings for Shepard to come as naturally as breathing.  Their first time together, Shepard had gazed up at him with his heart in his eyes, all patience and trust and appreciation.  They had read each other’s minds through soft kisses and tender grazes of skin, some ethereal feeling emanating from the sparse areas between them, a sensation like falling.

But now, Kaidan was hyperaware of everything, desperately seeking comforting words or an understanding glance, but maintaining enough control to know that Shepard’s mind was pleading to be suppressed, to dull the pain by sinking into itself.  This carnal action defied the weight of time and consequence, striving towards retaining some shred of humanity in the struggle to breathe, to survive despite the pain.

Shepard choked on a single sob, aborted mid-breath amidst the last rational thought he could muster.  He was suffocating, not from strangulation, but from drowning in his own senses.  Kaidan had watched long enough, and he made his decision.  He needed to do something to save him.

Something desperate.  Something crazy.

“S-Shepard, I love you—”

Something perhaps spoken against his better judgment.

But it was pure truth.

Kaidan fell into a quiet stillness, sheepishly staring at some spot off to the side.  It was something that had persisted in the back of his mind for three years, despite every doubt levied against it.  A burning desire, all-consuming, but in the most beautiful of ways: all the hasty judgments and fleeting mistrust had never extinguished that flame.

And when Shepard’s eyes opened, they spoke volumes in return.

“I— s-sorry,” Kaidan stuttered, pausing briefly to swallow the lump in his throat.  “I didn’t mean to…”  His sentence trailed off and never returned, and Shepard lay there in silence, waiting for it.

“I hate to see this from you,” Kaidan finally said.  With an apologetic kiss to Shepard’s temple, he pulled out, eliciting an unpleasant hiss from his lover as he removed himself from that confined heat.

He raised both hands to cup Shepard’s jaw, his thumbs smoothing out the stressed lines embedded in the skin there, and he pressed their foreheads together.  Their eyes closed, and over and over again Kaidan merely stroked his cheeks in some manner of reassurance.  They did not need many words.  They never had.  And yet he kissed Shepard’s cheek and told him:

“No one died because of you.”

Shepard swallowed hard, his breathing finally beginning to stabilize, his awareness slowly returning to him, his blood pumping in the kind of rhythmic beat that he had not felt in a long while.

“You’re a soldier, not a saint,” Kaidan said.  “But you’re also a man.  Human.”

Shepard had been called a legend: it was a reputation that preceded him and then left indomitable stories in its wake.  He hated it.  It was a ruse, created not of his own volition, but a burden nonetheless – as though any rational man would wish that upon himself.  But Kaidan had fallen in love with John Shepard.  Commander Shepard, the first human Spectre, and every other title tacked onto his name were fleeting nuances; the man beneath had persisted in spite of all of them.

“You did everything you could… and more than that.”  Kaidan spoke with such certainty.  For the first time since returning to the _Normandy_ , Shepard was inclined to believe it.

One of Kaidan’s hands slid back, fingers cradling the back of Shepard’s head and thumb pressed lightly against his temple, while the other glided down across the commander’s neck to the sharp planes of his chest and abs.  The shiver of still-flushed skin against his fingertips was his first reward; the second was the kiss pressed to his lips, tender, slow, and meaningful.

When Shepard parted from him, Kaidan let the moment linger in the air between them before he spoke again.  “There are things beyond your control – beyond anyone’s control,” he said, “and all you can do is live.”  His fingertips brushed along the short buzzed hair at the base of Shepard’s skull.

“Soldier on,” he continued, his gaze soft and sincere.  “You… you have to.  But don’t go it alone.  You’ll find a way, and I’ll be at your side – like you were at mine.”

Shepard’s eyes drifted back and forth between Kaidan’s until it dawned on him: Kaidan must have been referring to the events on Mars, where Shepard had set aside all his frustration at Kaidan’s suspicions.  Every skeptical question he had hurled at Shepard, every guarded glance he had levied at him – Kaidan must have felt like a fool when he woke in Huerta Memorial Hospital.  And, in every sense of the word, he had.  Not that his shock on Horizon at confirming the rumors of Shepard’s return to life and association with Cerberus had been unwarranted, but what Kaidan had failed to do then was trust that the man he knew – the man who took other lives upon his shoulders as though they were his own – truly was still in there.  For all his halfhearted apologies on Mars, Kaidan had survived.

Because Shepard had trusted him.  Because Shepard had saved him.

And now all Kaidan wanted was to save him.  Kaidan’s solemn gaze and gentle kiss articulated every apology he could never manage with words alone.  And yet, if only in the deepest recesses at the back of his mind, he wished Shepard would speak, and just say something – anything – in return.

The palm at Shepard’s abdomen began to glide further down, agile fingers feathering light touches over the hard flesh they encountered there, until they held together, bringing Shepard’s length against Kaidan’s, taut skin pulled flush against another’s.  Shepard arched into it, the newfound friction and heat exuding sparks from his tailbone to the pit of his stomach.

Kaidan’s hold was firm, and his sheer determination reflected in his eyes.  His thumb slicked the pre-cum leaking from each slit down the length of both of shafts, the blend of heat and sweat and arousal already palpable in the air between them.

But for all the arrhythmic strokes of sensitive flesh, Kaidan’s other hand slid up to grasp Shepard’s, upturning it and interlacing their fingers into a steady hold.  Kaidan’s grip was stable and secure, demonstrating all the control and composure for which he was known; and Shepard clutched the hand in his own with equal strength, no longer surrendering control to his instinct but rather entrusting it to Kaidan.

Shepard was screaming internally – _Kaidan, I love you_ – _Kaidan, don’t leave me_ – his words lost in the rhythmic cries of pleasure and occasional gasp that had escaped his throat instead.  Here, under Kaidan’s touch, he was keenly aware of the warmth in the pit of his gut, the erratic breaths falling unceremoniously from his lips, the thrum of his heartbeat against his eardrums… the telltale signs of life.  Every slight movement of skin between their interlaced fingers was a welcome embrace, not controlling, but rather steadying, grounding.  He felt the shared heat of their lips brushing over each other in staggered breaths.  He sensed everything with the fullest capacity of his heart and the clearest awareness of his mind.  And Kaidan returned it with the same passion.

But Kaidan had always worn his heart upon his sleeve like a chevron.  If only Shepard had recognized it years ago—

He cried out amidst the pull of shared friction and the slickness of mutual arousal.  Kaidan lifted his head only slightly, then trailed his lips across Shepard’s temple to whisper in his ear.

“I have hope.”  His words were simple and soft.  “For the galaxy, for Earth… for us.  We just have to live long enough to see it all play out.”

Every heated stroke, every subtle twist of the wrist, drove Shepard further toward the edge.  His head tilted to the side against the pillow, his eyes clenching shut.  One hand clutched Kaidan’s even tighter while the other fell to the sheet at his side, the sudden chill stinging his sweltering flesh.  His chest heaved against his lover’s with each sharp breath.  And all of his senses were utterly overwhelmed by the words that drifted into his ear.

“And you are a man worth living for.”

Shepard kissed him, craning his neck, angling his head slightly to the side, moaning into Kaidan’s mouth as he found release.  His fingers shook alongside Kaidan’s, still entrenched in that firm hold, so tight and intimate.  Kaidan felt every pulse in the veins at the back of Shepard’s hand, and his other hand continued to stroke them both, Shepard’s overstimulated skin against his, until he huffed out a low moan and found his own release, warmth combining with warmth, viscous fluid forming a short trail across their stomachs trembling against one another.

The separation was only momentary; Shepard returned his free hand to the nape of Kaidan’s neck, lifting and twisting his fingers in the sweat-dampened hair there, smiling through his next kiss.  Kaidan’s satisfied hum against his lips was his refuge, warm and alleviating in the midst of a war raging on just outside the door to his cabin – just outside of this moment in time.  He loved Kaidan, even if he had never had the courage to say so.  Perhaps, one day, when this war was over, he would ensure that Kaidan knew it for certain.

He was determined to live – to fight.  Until his heart gave out for good, Kaidan would be there to safeguard it.  He believed it with every fiber of his being, with every quirk of the lips into an awkward smile, with every passionate kiss, with every stroke of skin bared to the only other man who would ever see just how delicate it was.

“Kaidan, stay with me.”

It said everything.

Kaidan maneuvered to Shepard’s side and drew him into his arms, neither one caring about the mess left on their stomachs or the sullied bed sheets or the dimmed lights or the recycled air.  In this moment, they embraced one another in a comfortable silence: strained muscles twitching off their last nerve impulses, skin slicked with sweat, hands spread over chests and shoulders and waists in soothing touches.  Shepard turned his head toward the crook of Kaidan’s neck, reveling in the sensation of his own heart beating in unison with the one beneath the palm of his hand.

And, held in those strong arms, he was alive.


End file.
